


Holidays on the Hellmouth (or, How to Survive Your Boyfriend's Freshman Year)

by Mireille



Series: The Full Xander/Larry Experience [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-27
Updated: 2007-12-27
Packaged: 2019-03-16 23:33:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13646733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: When your boyfriend goes away to college, the passage of time gets measured in holidays.





	1. Labor Day

**Author's Note:**

> (Note: this is post-graduation. Larry is in it. In canon, the Scoobies survived graduation; in "The Full Xander Harris Experience," to which this is a sequel, Larry became a Scooby, therefore, in this universe, Larry survived graduation. This is scientific and unassailable logic, so there.)

"What do you mean, you want me to meet your parents?" Just a couple of seconds ago, this had been a good evening. Not too hot, even though it was August; perfect weather to be out here in the woods, leaning back against the front bumper of Larry's car, with Larry's hands sliding under his shirt and Larry's mouth, warm and soft and getting  _really_  good at knowing how Xander liked to be kissed.  
  
And then Larry had mumbled something with his mouth pressed against Xander's neck, and Xander could hear the squealing of metaphorical tires as his good evening crashed and burned.  
  
"I mean, I want you to meet my parents," Larry repeated. "Or anyway, my parents want to meet you. My mom says she's tired of only knowing you as the guy who calls the house and asks for me."  
  
Xander sighed. Maybe they could settle this here and now, and then they could get back to the reason they were out here in the first place, namely that it was completely free of parents--either his or Larry's--and little brothers who threatened to tell their mom if Larry broke the rules and took Xander up to his room. "I've  _met_  your parents," he said. "If they don't remember me, that's their problem."  
  
Larry frowned. "When, exactly, did you meet them?"  
  
"Your dad came to talk to us on Career Day in seventh grade." Twenty minutes on the fun of managing the Shop 'n' Save. Even if Xander had wanted to work in supermarket management before then, Larry's dad would have completely changed his mind.  
  
"That doesn't count, knucklehead." Xander probably would have minded the insult a lot more if Larry hadn't kissed him again right afterward.  
  
"Your mom!" Xander said. "She was in charge of costumes for the Christmas pageant in second grade. She stapled me into a big cardboard box so I'd look like a present under the tree. Plus, I went to your birthday party in kindergarten."  
  
"Yeah. I tried that," Larry said. "Even showed her the pictures." He smirked. "I had to convince her that you don't still do your hair in tiny little braids with pink sparkly barrettes at the end."  
  
Xander flushed. "That was totally Willow's fault," he said.  
  
"I think I remember you asking her to do it." Larry grinned, taking a half step forward so that Xander's legs were on either side of one of his thighs; he leaned in to kiss Xander again, and for a second, Xander forgot about Willow and Larry's parents and pretty much everything except how very, very good this evening was turning out to be, after all. "So you're okay with this?" Larry asked, when they finally pulled apart.  
  
Xander blinked for a few seconds. His first instincts were to say, "God, yes," and reach for Larry, but something clued him in, just in the nick of time, that that probably wasn't the "this" Larry meant.  
  
Larry seemed to be totally unaware of Xander's confusion. "Because my parents are having this cookout on Monday, since it's the last chance they'll have for a big family thing before I leave for school, and my mom really wants you to be there."  
  
"I don't know, Larry," he said. Parents, in Xander's experience, were something best avoided, even the reasonably cool ones. "I mean, a big Labor Day cookout at your parents' house? That's kind of...." Terrifying, really. A lot worse than your average giant demon snake at graduation.   
And also serious. Larry's parents knew about them, so that meant that when Xander turned up, it wasn't just going to be as some friend of Larry's from school. He'd be there as Boyfriend of Their First-Born Child, and Xander wasn't sure he and Larry were serious enough for that. After all, Larry was going off to UCLA at the end of September, and Xander had been mentally preparing himself for the phone call he was going to get a couple of weeks later, about the guy Larry met in the dorm or in one of his classes, and how he didn't want to hurt Xander, but....  
  
But Xander wasn't going to say that to Larry, because Larry had been insisting for two months now that nothing like that was going to happen, so he decided to focus on the terror. "Kind of major," he said. Larry's family all lived in Sunnydale--parents and two sets of grandparents and aunts and uncles and God-knew-how-many cousins--and he was pretty sure that anything Larry described as "a big family thing" was going to involve at least eight dozen assorted relatives, all of whom were going to be trying to decide whether Larry's boyfriend was good enough for him. "I'm thinking maybe I'd rather face certain death. And you saw how well that went last week, what with the screaming like a little girl and running away." Okay, eight-foot demons justified the screaming and running, but still. His point had been made.   
  
Larry took a deep breath. "Look," he said. "I didn't want to say this."  
  
"Then don't," Xander suggested. If he hadn't been trapped between Larry and the hood of the car, he would have pulled away right now. The best thing he could think of that might be happening right now was Larry giving him an ultimatum: come to this family thing, or break up. Xander really, really didn't want to break up with Larry, but he also didn't want Larry to think "Do what I want, or I'll break up with you," was a good argument.  
  
Larry was doing the not-listening thing again, though, because he went on with, "My parents are giving me a lot of crap right now about dating you. Not you specifically, but because we're not going to break up when I go off to college. They think we're way too young for this." He rolled his eyes. "My mom gave me some big speech about all the guys I'm going to meet in Los Angeles, and how it won't be fair to either of us if I stay with you when I want to be seeing new people."  
  
Larry's mom? Not stupid, apparently, except for the thing where she thought  _pointing out_  to Larry that he was going to dump Xander before midterms was a brilliant idea. "So?"  
  
"So at least if they've met you, maybe they'll start to understand that I don't  _want_  to see new people." Larry grinned. "I mean, really. Where else am I going to find somebody who'd call me at eleven at night to come get them from freaking  _Oxnard_?"  
  
Xander grinned back at him. Okay, not his finest moment, calling his boyfriend after he'd been gone for less than half a day to explain that his car was dead, he couldn't afford the repairs, and the only place that was willing to hire him short-term was a strip club. A male strip club, which meant Xander might even be called upon to strip, and Larry didn't want hundreds of horny middle-aged women ogling his boyfriend, did he?  
  
Larry had been laughing too hard to answer that, but at least he'd come to Xander's rescue, and he'd promised not to share the part about the strip club with anyone, ever.  
  
Maybe this could work. A guy who'd sneak out of the house to pick you up in Oxnard was the kind of guy who might stick around even if the distance thing sucked.  
  
And it'd probably help if Larry's parents weren't pro- them breaking up. Of course, there was a good chance that they'd hate him and would be even more in favor of Larry kicking him to the curb, but it was just barely possible that it would be okay. "Okay," Xander said, finally. "I have to be at work at seven, but I can come over for a while in the afternoon."  
  
"Cool," Larry said.  
  
"We'll see how cool it is after we find out whether or not your parents kill me and bury me in the backyard."  
  
"You're not seriously worried about  _that_ , are you? I know this is Sunnydale, but I'm pretty sure my parents aren't serial killers."  
  
"I admit I might be exaggerating slightly about the killing. Seriously worried, though, yeah."  
  
Then Larry's hand was curving around the back of his neck, pulling him closer. "Guess I'll just have to distract you before you panic, then."  
  


***

  
  
"How many relatives do you  _have_ , Larry?" Xander muttered under his breath as Larry led the way through the house. Larry's little brother Josh was on the couch watching TV with three other kids--probably cousins; they looked a lot like Larry--while an old man sat in a recliner looking through the newspaper. Xander had seen a lot of people in the backyard as he walked up to the house, too, so he knew they were just the tip of the iceberg.  
  
"My dad was one of nine kids. I think I'm related to half of Sunnydale," Larry said, shrugging. He pushed aside a swinging door, the kind that made Xander think of the saloon in an old Western, and then grabbed Xander's hand, pulling him through into the kitchen.  
  
Once Xander was inside, he could see Larry's reason for dragging him in here. Larry's mom was standing by the sink, peeling potatoes, while another woman about the same age was chopping onions at the counter. Two older women were sitting at the kitchen table, one shaping hamburger meat into patties and the other trying to braid the hair of a squirming girl who looked like she was about six or seven.  
  
"Mom?" Larry said, not letting go of Xander, like he was scared Xander was going to take off at a run. He might have had a point. "Xander's here."  
  
It was totally not too late to run, Xander thought. At least, not if he was willing to never, ever see Larry again, and for the split second before Larry's mom wiped her hands off on a dishtowel and turned around, Xander gave that some serious consideration.  
  
But she was smiling when she said, "Hi, Xander. I'm glad you could make it," and she sounded sincere enough that Xander thought that he could stick around for a few minutes, anyway. Maybe long enough to eat, at least.   
  
"Um," he started, and then trailed off until Larry nudged him in the side. "I mean, thanks for inviting me."  
  
"We've been trying to get Larry to bring you around since before graduation," she said.  
  
Larry looked down at the linoleum, mumbling, "Mom, don't start. Please," and it was Xander's turn to squeeze Larry's hand, because this was something he knew all about. He wished, for Larry's sake, that he wasn't here watching it, but at least it was something he was completely familiar with. And maybe if Larry's mom had started criticizing him already, they could get out of here early.  
  
But to Xander's confusion, she grinned at Larry and said, "If you're going to spend that much time telling us how great he is, you can't expect us not to want to see for ourselves," and then reached out to straighten Larry's collar.  
  
Larry squirmed and ducked his head and grumbled, "Quit it," but he was grinning, too, and Xander was almost too bewildered by the way they were acting to realize what Mrs. Blaisdell had just said.  
  
Almost. Not quite. Because Larry  _talked about him_. To his parents. And said good things.  
  
Okay, maybe it was stupid to just be realizing this now, considering that Larry had picked him up after work last night and they'd sat in the car for a couple of hours, talking and making out and then talking some more, but the first thing that crossed Xander's mind was,  _I think he really does like me._  
  
"Will you boys take those drinks outside, please?" Larry's mom asked, pointing to a big green Coleman cooler next to the back door. "And Larry? Not one word about Jeanna's hair. Your aunt Kate just calmed down about it, and I don't want her starting up again."  
  
"What'd she do now?" Larry asked, then, to Xander, "My cousin's a senior at Caltech. Every quarter she does something new and bizarre to her hair. It's kind of impressive, in a weird way."  
  
"Pink spikes," said Mrs. Blaisdell. "She did worse in junior high, but you know Kate."  
  
"And I know that if I did that to my hair, you'd be just as bent out of shape as she is," Larry said, going over to the door and grabbing one handle of the cooler. "Come on, Xander, let's get this outside."  
  
"That is not true," she said. "If you came home with your hair like that, I would acknowledge that you're an adult now, and if I can't trust you to make a decision about your own hair, I didn't do a very good job of raising you." Then, laughing at Larry's doubtful expression, she added, "And when you were asleep, I'd sneak into your room and shave your head."  
  
"Okay, that I believe," Larry said, grinning.  
  
Once they got outside, Xander realized that Larry didn't have a family; he had a  _horde_. There were people messing with barbecue grills, people drinking beer and sitting in lawn chairs, people playing Frisbee. And there were kids everywhere, from the pink-haired Jeanna down to a handful of preschoolers rolling around in the grass with a dog and a sleeping baby in a floppy sunhat. "Don't panic," Larry muttered, once they had the cooler set down under a tree. "They're all freaks, but they're harmless. My uncle Mike is an asshole, but my grandma already told him that if he makes any more fag jokes he's out of the will, so he ought to be okay."  
  
That was so not comforting, but Xander reminded himself that if he'd brought Larry to one of his family's infrequent get-togethers, it'd have been a lot worse. And anyway, he helped save the world in their spare time. He could face one asshole uncle. "I'm good," he said, and Larry smirked.  
  
"Sure you are," Larry said. "Let's just get the worst over with now." He led the way over to the back steps, climbing to the top and waiting for Xander to follow him. Then, in a loud voice, he said, "Hey, everybody, shut up a minute." After a few seconds and one shriek of "NO!" from a kid lugging an Elmo doll, everyone pretty much stopped talking, looking up at Larry to see what he was doing. "This is Xander," Larry went on, and Xander managed a grin and a wave that probably qualified him as king of the dork-people. "He's my boyfriend. I'd kind of like to keep him, so could you all try to act like normal people?"  
  
He was going to die of embarrassment. He was going to die, literally and permanently, from having six thousand of his boyfriend's relatives staring at him, all at once. And if he didn't die, he was going to crawl under the deck and refuse to come out until everyone was gone.  
  
Or, as it turned out, he was going to feel somebody tugging on the leg of his jeans, and look down to find a tiny blond kid sticking out an unlaced sneaker for him to fix, because apparently one more-or-less-grown-up was as good as another. And by the time he finished that and firmly turned down the offer of a sticky, grass-covered Blow-Pop as payment, everybody had gone back to what they were doing, and he figured he might survive this after all.  
  


***

  
  
Things had gone okay for a while; they'd played Frisbee and eaten hamburgers and generally just hung out, and while a lot of people seemed to be looking him over, still, and he was pretty sure he identified Larry's uncle Mike without an introduction from the way his lip curled in disgust whenever he looked at the two of them, Xander had decided this wasn't all that bad.  
  
Then he and Larry had dragged the cooler back into the house to add more ice and cans of soda to it, and Larry's parents were both in the kitchen at once, and they'd motioned for Xander and Larry to come and sit down.  
  
And for a few minutes, even that was okay; Larry's mom had asked him whether he'd had enough to eat, and Larry's dad had said something about how crappy the Dodgers were doing this year, and Xander was completely weirded out by how much Larry's parents both seemed to like him. "Him" being Larry, although they seemed to like  _him_ , meaning Xander, too, and this whole situation was just... strange. But nice.  
  
And then Mr. Blaisdell had said, "So, where are you going to college? Larry didn't say," and Xander remembered one of the many reasons Larry's parents were really going to hate him.  
  
"I, um," Xander said. "I'm not."  _I just barely made it out of high school,_  he didn't add, and remembered that last year, Larry had been in some honors classes. Not that smart people didn't like him. Willow was smart, smarter than anybody Xander knew except maybe Giles. Buffy was smart; she just didn't like to study even when she had time. But smart people, people who were going off to UCLA, people who were going to be  _lawyers_ , didn't date guys who worked the cash register at 7-11.   
  
"I have a job," he volunteered, even if it wasn't going to help, because he didn't want Larry's parents to think he was a complete slacker. "It's, um. Not a great job, I'm a cashier, but it's something, and--"  
  
Larry squeezed Xander's hand under the table, and Xander made himself take a couple of deep breaths and  _stop babbling_. He looked at the Blaisdells, who were polite enough not to look horribly disappointed by him. In fact, Larry's dad even said, "That's good. Do you like it?" and Xander had been able to calm down enough to admit that the job was not great, but definitely okay. And everything would have been fine if Larry's dad hadn't then looked at him for a minute and said, "Harris. Hm. Are your parents from around here?"  
  
Larry groaned. "Enough already, Dad, leave him alone. Get the FBI to do a background check if you're that curious."  
  
Xander had just said, "Yes, sir, both of them," and really wished he didn't have to talk about his parents. Especially not to Larry's family, who were mostly nice and liked Larry and were okay with Larry bringing his boyfriend over during a family party, and who didn't need to know that Xander's family wasn't anything like that, at all.  
  
"Your dad's Tony Harris, isn't he?" Larry's dad sounded like he'd just solved a puzzle, like Willow when she got into a computer system she didn't have the password for. When Xander nodded, Mr. Blaisdell said, "I went to high school with him."  
  
Xander just nodded again, miserably, and how had it not occurred to him that Larry's parents might know his? And oh, shit, that was bad, because he was sure Larry's parents would talk about Larry, and about how he brought his stupid, 7-11 clerk boyfriend over for Labor Day, and hell, even Xander's parents would be able to recognize him from that description, even if they didn't name him. He knew his dad knew where he worked, although Xander hadn't told him; he'd bought gas there the other morning, and it wasn't like his dad didn't recognize Xander when he saw him.  
  
But that was all Mr. Blaisdell said about it, like all he'd cared about was figuring out the puzzle. It was Larry's mom who decided that inviting disaster would be good. "We should have you all over to dinner one of these days, before Larry leaves for school," she said.  
  
He was relieved that Larry blurted out, "No! Bad idea, Mom," because Xander's vocal cords were completely paralyzed with shock.  
  
"I promise, I won't let your father talk about baseball," she said, smiling, but Xander still shook his head, silently pleading with Larry to get him out of this.  
  
"It's not that," Larry said. "It's just--you guys have been great, you know? About everything. But Xander's parents... they're not going to be so great about things. And so until he's making enough money to move out of the house, Xander hasn't, um, you know. Told them about us. Or anything."  
  
"I'm sorry, Xander," Mrs. Blaisdell said. "That just--it never occurred to me. I'm sorry."  
  
Xander shrugged, forcing a smile. "It's okay. It's no big deal." And it wasn't, most days, because God, this was a relatively  _small_  secret compared to most of the stuff he kept from his parents, but right now, today, when he was sitting here looking at Larry's parents, who  _never even thought_  that Xander's dad would probably throw him out of the house if he found out Xander was dating a guy, it felt like a really huge deal, after all.  
  
"When you do tell them," she said, "whenever that is, tell your parents they can give me a call, if they want to talk."  
  
Yeah. Because that would happen. Either Xander telling his parents  _anything_ , or them wanting to talk about it. But she wasn't going to understand that, even if Xander tried to tell her, so he just nodded. "Okay," he mumbled, and then pushed his chair back. "Excuse me," he said, because the last thing he wanted, even now, was for Larry's parents to think he was rude. "I'll be right back."  
  
Larry looked up at him, frowning. "You okay?"  
  
"Yeah," Xander lied. "Yeah, I'm fine. Too many cans of coke," he explained, and left the kitchen as fast as he could without actually running.  
  
In the bathroom, he splashed water on his face until he thought he looked pretty normal. He didn't want to go back downstairs, but he figured he was going to have to, eventually. It wasn't Larry's fault, or his parents', or anybody else's, that Xander's family sucked in comparison. It was just what was true. And it wasn't really a problem, either; Xander was used to it, and it wasn't like he didn't know things could have been a lot worse.  
  
In the end, he went back downstairs, because there were maybe forty people in the backyard and it just didn't seem fair to stay in the bathroom, but he didn't go back into the kitchen. The kids were gone from the living room; the only people in there were a toddler curled up sleeping in the seat of the recliner, and an old woman, sitting on the couch, also apparently asleep. Xander sat down carefully at the other end of the couch, not wanting to bother her.  
  
Either it didn't work, or she hadn't been asleep at all, because she lifted her head, then, adjusting her glasses and looking at him.   
  
Xander had met both of Larry's grandmothers already today; they were kind of old, but not really. One of them had been wearing a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt, and the other one had told him about going surfing in Hawaii a few months ago. This woman, though, hadn't been surfing in a billion years, if ever. She was tiny and wrinkled and was wearing a green dress with little flowers on it, and she kept looking at Xander and frowning. "Idiot doctors," she said. "That cataract surgery was a waste of time. Not four feet away from me, and I can't see you well enough to recognize who you are." She shook her head, smiling. "You're not Carol's boy, he's blond--"  
  
"You don't know me," Xander interrupted. "I'm, um, Xander Harris. I'm just--I'm here with Larry."  
  
The old woman laughed. "So you're the boyfriend!" she said, sounding a lot more cheerful than Xander would have figured a little old lady would have been, under the circumstances. "I was afraid I'd missed you, but at my age, I'm as bad as the little one over there. Naps stopped being optional ten years ago." She smiled at him. "I'm Larry's great-grandma, honey. You can call me Millie." Then, totally out of the blue, she said, "How old do you think I am?"  
  
Well, he totally hadn't been prepared for that. "Sixty-five," he said, because there was no way that wasn't way too low.  
  
She laughed again, patting the sofa cushion next to her. "You're either a very sweet boy or a terrible guesser," she said. "I'm ninety-three. Now, come over here so I don't wake the baby, and keep me company for a while." She grinned at him. "I'll make it worth your time. I know  _all_  the good stories about when Larry was a little boy."  
  
Xander slid over on the couch, because hey, blackmail material was always good. He'd gotten all the mileage out of the stuff he remembered from kindergarten that he was probably going to. Besides, Millie wasn't interrogating him about his parents, or anything else; she'd just happily launched into a story about how Larry had decided, when he was about three, that he was going to go to work with his dad, and had managed to walk all the way to the Shop 'n' Save before anybody knew he was gone.  
  
Millie was on her fourth story about Larry when she broke off, chuckling. "Speak of the devil," she said, and Xander looked up to see Larry standing there, watching Xander with this weird, goofy smile.  
  
"Hey," Xander said. "I, uh, just needed a little time to, you know. Decompress."  
  
"Okay," Larry said, and then again, as a question. "You're okay?"  
  
"Totally. Millie's been telling me about you streaking at your Aunt Marie's wedding." He grinned at Larry, realizing he did feel a lot better now.  
  
"Oh, jeez, Grandma, I was two." Larry bent down, kissing Millie on the cheek. "Don't terrorize my boyfriend, okay? I want to keep him."  
  
"He's a very bad liar," Millie said. "He said I looked sixty-five. But I like him."  
  
"Good," Larry said. "I like him too." He grinned down at Xander. "Dad wants me to help clean up the backyard," he said. "So if you're looking for me--"  
  
"I'll come with you," Xander offered, getting up. "It was really nice meeting you, Millie," he said.  
  
She patted him on the hand. "You come talk to me any time you want more stories about Larry. I have a thousand of them."  
  
Xander had to laugh at Larry's horrified expression. "I just might," he said, just to see Larry's face. Then he let Larry lead the way to the backyard.  
  
"She didn't talk too much, did she?" Larry asked. "Grandma Millie's great, but she lives at Valley Pines now--you know, that retirement complex on the other side of town?--and I think she gets lonely."  
  
"No," Xander said. "She's great." His Grandma Harris had died when Xander was in first grade, but he'd liked her a lot. She'd worn flowered dresses and baked cookies and had watched Xander after school when his mom had to work, and Xander hadn't missed her in a long time before today. But he wasn't saying any of that, because it was stupid and hard to explain. "Your whole family's great, even if they think I'm a loser."  
  
"What?" The kitchen was empty now, and Larry stopped, leaning against the refrigerator. "Who thinks you're a loser?"  
  
Xander shrugged. "You know. Because I'm not going to college. Your dad was great about it, but I know he thinks--"  
  
"One of these days," Larry said, sighing, "I'm going to remember that sometimes, you can be the world's biggest moron. That way I can start planning in advance, so I can  _stop you_  before you freak out about things that aren't even a problem. Xander, my dad doesn't give a damn about you going to college."  
  
"Career Day," Xander said. "Your dad kept talking about how he had a degree in business management--" Pacing was a good option, he decided. He could pace back and forth in front of the refrigerator, and then he wouldn't feel like he was going to jump out of his skin from nerves, from waiting for Larry to figure out that Xander was right and break up with him.  
  
Larry let his head fall back, thudding against the freezer door. "That's because my dad is a dork," he said. "He didn't start college until I was maybe five. He went to night school, because he couldn't get promoted past assistant manager without a degree. I think Career Day was, like, a week after he made manager." Larry grinned. "My dad is not going to complain about someone going to work right after high school. A week after he graduated from high school, he was stocking shelves at the supermarket."  
  
"Your mom, then," Xander said. "Isn't she a teacher?"  
  
"So what?" Larry said. " Xander, they  _like_  you. They get that not everybody goes to college. Definitely not everybody in my family does. I mean, Jeanna's like, super-rocket-scientist, but her sister didn't even finish high school. Not that her mom's thrilled, but you know, they still love her."  
  
Xander just shook his head. "It is totally not natural how well your family gets along. I suspect Hellmouth influence."  
  
Larry shrugged. "We don't always. Uncle Mike's, well, Uncle Mike, and Jeanna goes around trying to piss her mom off all the time, and..." He shrugged again, looking down at the floor. "And I hardly even talked to my parents for, like, two years, except for stuff like 'pass the mashed potatoes.'"  
  
"How come?"  
  
"Why do you think? I thought they were going to hate me when they found out I'm gay."  
  
"They so do not hate you," Xander said, trying not to sound too envious.  
  
"Yeah. My dad was kind of pissed when I told them that, because he thinks I should have known they wouldn't ever do that." Larry grinned sheepishly. "Especially since my mom's brother Eddie--he's not here, he lives in Michigan--is gay." The grin got bigger. "I sort of didn't notice that. The living-with-the-same-guy-since-before-I-was-born thing wasn't a big enough clue."  
  
Xander laughed. "Okay, see, even I would have noticed that."  
  
"Good thing I have you around, then."  
  
"So I can point out to you when your uncles are gay?"  
  
"That, too." Larry stepped away from the fridge, grabbing Xander's arm as he paced. Xander stopped, and Larry pulled him closer, his arms going around Xander as they kissed. Right there, in Larry's parents' kitchen. At least there was nobody watching.  
  
Except, of course, Xander's luck couldn't possibly run that way, because when they stepped back, two of Larry's little cousins were watching them, their popsicles melting and dripping onto the floor. The bigger one, a boy who looked maybe eight, made a face at them when he realized they were looking at him, and then ran away outside.  
  
The other kid was the girl who'd been having her hair braided when Xander came in. It was halfway out of the braid now, sticking out in every direction like the fluff on a dandelion. She stared right back at them and said, very solemnly, "Ew. Kissing."  
  


***

  
  
"What did my mom want to talk to you about?" Larry said. They were standing out by Xander's car; he'd changed into his work clothes in Larry's bedroom, so he could wait until the last possible minute to leave. It was at least two or three minutes past the last possible one now, but he was still here.  
  
Xander shrugged. "Nothing much." Larry had been helping his dad clean up the yard, but his mom had pulled Xander aside to talk to him.  
  
"I like you, Xander," she'd said. "You seem like a nice boy, and you make my son happy." Xander had waited, because that was the kind of sentence that had a big, giant "but" attached to it. "But I worry--about both of you, really," she'd gone on. Yep, there it was. "You're very young, and with Larry going off to college--" She broke off, shaking her head. "I just don't want the two of you to rush into anything. You're young. You have plenty of time. It's far too early for you to be getting serious."  
  
"I know," Xander had said, and that seemed to make her happy.  
  
And he did know. Larry was going off to college. Xander was staying here. There were vampires and demons and who-knew-what-else out there, and Xander was still going to be helping Buffy fight them. All kinds of things could happen. Life was way too messy for them to get serious. Not now, maybe not ever.  
  
But then he'd looked across the yard at Larry, who was arguing with his brother about who had helped more with cleaning up the backyard, and even though it wasn't exactly one of Larry's better moments, there was that thing that happened sometimes when he looked at Larry, where something lurched inside Xander's stomach and he felt like he'd been smacked in the head, and the only thing he could think was that he didn't want that feeling to end any time soon. Maybe not ever.  
  
He hadn't said that to Larry's mom, though, because he knew it was the last thing she wanted to hear.  
  


***


	2. Halloween

Larry was waiting for him. Which, okay, was not all that surprising, since he knew Xander was coming, not to mention that Xander was at least ninety minutes late. But the car had started to overheat and he'd had to pull over at a gas station for a while, and then there was the thing where Larry's directions to the place Xander was supposed to park  _sucked_.  
  
But Larry was waiting for him  _in the parking garage_ , leaning against a wall and watching the entrance, which made Xander feel both guilty and kind of glad. He found a parking place, finally, getting out of the car and starting toward where he'd seen Larry waiting.  
  
"Sorry," Xander said, coming up behind Larry and setting his bag down by his feet. "My car is not up to road trips." At least this one had made it all the way here. He didn't think he'd be able to live down having to call Larry to rescue him  _every_  time he left Sunnydale.  
  
Maybe Larry was pissed that Xander was so late. Maybe he didn't like waiting around for ages in a UCLA parking garage. Maybe--maybe a lot of things, but when Larry heard him, he turned around, grinning. "I was starting to think you'd changed your mind."  
  
"No way," Xander said. "And I'd have been here forty-five minutes ago if you could tell your left from your right." He grinned right back, though. It had been over a month since he'd seen Larry, and phone calls, even a  _lot_  of phone calls, just weren't the same thing.  
  
"Well," Larry said. "Not changed your mind, exactly." He looked away; Xander followed his gaze, but the only thing of any interest was a better parking place. He'd missed that on his way in. "But I thought you might have had to work. Which, you know, I'd understand, but it would totally suck, because I don't know when the next time Keith's going home for the weekend."  
  
"Oh, uh, yeah. About that." Xander took a deep breath. "I kind of got fired last week."  
  
"What happened?"  
  
"I forgot to show up," he said. "And before you start looking at me like I'm the biggest moron ever, let me point out that I 'forgot' in the context of very bad vampire-related stuff going down, but that's not exactly the kind of thing they let you take off from work for."  
  
"You didn't really like that job much anyway. Not once they hired that new manager," Larry said.  
  
"This is true." He'd already started looking for something else, even. He just didn't like getting  _fired_.  
  
"You'll find something else," Larry went on, and Xander realized this was supposed to be a pep talk.  
  
He grinned. "Larry, dude, calm down. I'm not going to cry on your shoulder, okay? It was a crappy job, and I'll find another one when I get back to Sunnydale. I'm fine." Larry grinned back, and parking garage or no parking garage, Xander wanted to kiss him right then. That probably ought to wait, though, he reminded himself. "So, um. What's the plan?"  
  
Larry shrugged. "Some friends of mine are having a Halloween party," he said. "It's no big deal, but I thought, you know, we could go, if you want."  
  
No, Xander didn't want. Larry had been at college for five weeks. The last thing Xander wanted to do now was go hang out with a bunch of Larry's new college friends. He didn't want to be a jerk, though, so he shrugged too. "Yeah, whatever."  
  
"We don't have to," Larry said. "I just... These are guys I met at one of the GLBT student groups, so they're going to be cool about us. And I kind of wanted them to meet you. You know, since they're my friends and you're kind of... important."  
  
That sounded better. Less "let's see if Xander can fit in with my new, cooler, friends." "Sure, okay," Xander said, nudging him with his elbow. "As long as there's food. I had an egg salad sandwich from a gas station when I stopped to let the car cool down, but--"  
  
Larry looked at him in horror. "What, vampires aren't dangerous enough for you? Next you're going to tell me you miss cafeteria food."  
  
"It was better than my cooking," Xander admitted, "but still no."  
  
He picked up his bag again, and they started walking, Larry a half-step ahead because he actually knew where he was going. "The plan," Larry said, "is to go to Alan and Jay's party for a while. Say hi to some people, get some food, there'll be beer if you want some. Maybe find a corner and make out for a while, because I feel like I missed a key part of my high school experience there." He turned to smirk at Xander over his shoulder. "And then we'll get out of there," he promised.  
  
There was no part of this plan that sounded like an extremely bad idea. Food was good, saying hi to Larry's friends would be okay, and anything that let him actually touch Larry,  _soon_ , was  _incredible_.

***

  
  
The reason the party had sounded like a not-terrible idea was that Xander hadn't known about Stefan. Alan and Jay--Jay's real name was something long and Indian that nobody could apparently pronounce, but he seemed okay with "Jay"--were all right, at least, even if Jay had gone a little overboard with the Halloween decorations, especially since Halloween wasn't until next weekend; and Alan had a tendency to corner people and start talking to them  _really fast_  about math. Most of the other people there were all right, too; they said hi, they talked to Xander and Larry (mostly Larry, but that was okay, because they  _knew_  Larry) for a couple of minutes, they went on with their lives. Some girl wearing a "What Would Xena Do?" t-shirt had handed them a couple of beers, but after taking a sip, Xander had left it behind on the kitchen counter. Larry drank his, which Xander decided he didn't have a problem with. One beer wasn't turning anybody into his dad.  
  
All one beer did was make Larry grin at him a little more goofily. Except Xander remembered that from the walk over here, too, so maybe that wasn't the beer.  
  
And then some skinny blond guy in a Radiohead t-shirt was holding on to Larry's elbow, smirking at Xander. "I take it this is the famous Xander?" he said, making "Xander" sound like "cockroach."  
  
Larry yanked his arm away, moving closer to Xander. "Yeah. Xander, this is Stefan." He didn't sound all that happy, which made Xander feel a little better about his immediate desire to punch Stefan in the face.  
  
"Hi," Xander said, because he figured that was smarter than the punching thing. And then Larry pulled him away to talk to some guy who knew Oz because his band had played with Dingoes Ate My Baby, and Xander thought that was the last he'd ever see of Stefan.  
  
Until Alan had asked Xander what his major was, and Xander had shrugged and mumbled that he didn't go to college. Alan was fine with that, at least if, "At least it's not  _drama_ ," was fine; since Larry leaned in and whispered that Jay was a drama major and really, they did this  _all the time_ , Xander was guessing that it was.  
  
It was Stefan who'd looked him up and down, lip curled, and said, "Oh, for fuck's sake, Larry, he's not pretty enough to be a trophy wife."  
  
Alan had given Stefan a dirty look, and the girl in the Xena shirt had grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away, bitching at him the whole time, but Xander was left standing there, staring at his shoes and hoping that his face hadn't turned as red as he thought it did.  
  
And then he felt Larry's hand on his shoulder. "We're leaving," he said.  
  
"Not sad about that," Xander said, and after stopping by the front door to find his bag in the pile of stuff people had dumped there, followed him out.  
  
He waited until they were out of the building before he said anything else, but then he decided he really had to just get it over with. "This is never going to work," he said quietly.  
  
"What?" Xander didn't answer, just kept walking, but Larry didn't give up. "No, seriously," he said, running a little to keep up with Xander. "What the  _fuck_?"  
  
He shrugged. "I don't fit in with your new friends. I'm not going to fit in with your life after college, either. You're in a new place, doing new stuff, and I can't be a part of it. You can't blame me for feeling left out."  
  
"How do you think I feel?" Larry said. "I'm not good at knowing that I'm just sitting here at school while you guys are all still back home  _doing something_. You're all putting yourselves in danger, keeping people safe, and I'm here in L.A."  
  
"There's stuff in L.A., too," Xander said. "It's not like Sunnydale has an exclusive on things that go bump in the night."  
  
"Yeah, right," Larry said. "Sure, if I stumble across a vampire, I'll try to do something, but there's just me. I can't exactly go vigilante without getting killed before Veteran's Day."  
  
Xander was going to hate himself if he said the next thing that came into his mind, he knew. It didn't stop him from saying it. "Angel's in L.A.," he said. "Oz says he's doing the whole evil-fighting thing. And apparently, Cordelia's there, too. You could probably--"  
  
Larry snorted. "Yeah. Right. I'm going to walk in and ask your ex-girlfriend and Buffy's ex-boyfriend to let me hang out and fight demons with them. Cordelia can be a lot scarier than any demon, and Angel--" He shrugged. "You know what I think about Angel."  
  
Xander knew better than Larry did that Angel was bad news; Larry had only come in at the end of things. He was only reacting to the "vampire equals bad" thing. He didn't have any idea how bad Angel could be, when he wanted to. Still, he knew they were both basically on the same page, Angel-wise. "Yeah, okay. It was just a suggestion." And he was glad Larry wasn't taking it, because Xander wasn't sure which worried him more: Angel possibly going evil and killing Larry, or Larry and Cordelia spending some downtime comparing notes on him.  
  
"So I'll live with it," Larry said.  
  
"And I guess that means I'm supposed to live with knowing your college friends think I'm a loser."  
  
"Dude, my friends liked you.  _Stefan_  was an asshole, but one, he's not my friend, he's a guy who wanted to have sex with me, and two, I'm pretty sure you can't blame him on college since he's only been here a month." He put his hand on Xander's shoulder again, and this time, Xander stopped walking. "I told you, this doesn't change anything. The only person who cares that you aren't going to college is you. And I  _thought_  you were going to quit assuming the worst about me." Xander turned his head to look at Larry, but Larry wouldn't meet his eyes. "But hey, if you want to break up with me because one person said something stupid, go ahead."  
  
"I don't want to break up with you," Xander said. "I just don't want you to break up with me."  
  
"Well, I'm not going to," Larry said. "So if that's settled, can we stop having this conversation now?"  
  
"Yeah," Xander said, quickly, because the last thing he wanted to do was stand in the middle of the sidewalk having a talk about their relationship.  
  


***

  
  
"No, seriously," Larry said, leaning back against the side of the bed, "your dad gave you fifty bucks for gas?"  
  
"Even my car doesn't use that much gas," Xander said, "but yeah." They were on the floor of Larry's dorm room; Xander had claimed a beanbag chair from the corner and was sprawled on his stomach, using the beanbag as a pillow. His hand was resting on Larry's leg, because there was no way he was going to be in the same room as Larry for the first time in over a month and not touch him.  
  
"Your dad actually knew you were  _going_  somewhere?"  
  
"I know," Xander said. "It was seriously weird. I almost called Giles and told him there was an apocalypse." Then he grinned. "It was even weirder when he told me why he was doing it."  
  
Larry thought for a minute. "The government is beaming secret messages into his head?"  
  
"No," Xander said. "Weirder than that." He shook his head. "He told me, and I quote, 'I always thought you were some kind of fag, hanging out with all those girls.'" He looked up at Larry, grinning more. "But since now I'm friends with this big, macho ex-football star--" That was it; he couldn't get any more out, just buried his face in the beanbag and started laughing.  
  
Rolling his eyes, Larry said, "Want me to kick your dad's ass next time I'm home? Because I so will."  
  
"No," Xander said, just in case Larry wasn't joking. Half of him wanted to say yes, mostly because for about thirty seconds that afternoon, he'd felt like his dad was proud of him, and it had pissed him off royally that it had been for something stupid and wrong. The other half knew that siccing his boyfriend on his dad wasn't a good plan, no matter what the temptation.  
  
"Want me to sell tickets so people can watch Buffy kicking his ass?"  
  
"Still no," Xander said. "Even if it would fit with that tough, manly image you  _don't_  have."  
  
"What are you saying?" Larry asked. "I'm not manly?" And before Xander could answer, Larry had smacked him on the back of the head, too lightly to hurt, and Xander was laughing and grabbing Larry's arm and pulling him down onto the beanbag too; and there was a tangle of legs and arms and warm, heavy weight pushing him down, rolling him onto his back and holding him there and Xander was suddenly aware--in the sense that all of a sudden his brain didn't have room for any other thought--that they were alone, without parents or siblings or the end of the world to interrupt them.  
  
Xander hadn't really thought that through before now. Hadn't thought about what this weekend could be. What Larry was probably hoping this weekend was going to be. He wasn't sure he wanted to think about it now.  
  
Thinking might get in the way of doing, and Xander wanted more than the furtive, frantic groping in Larry's car--okay, that had been one of the high points of his summer--but still, he wanted more now. He pushed up, up and against Larry and that was a gasp, that was Larry's eyes going wide and dark and Larry pushing back down against him, wanting this as much as Xander did. And then Xander heard his own voice, sounding strange and hoarse, asking, "Are we going to--I, um. Really?" Oh, God, that wasn't even English.  
  
But Larry was getting pretty good at translating Xander-speak by now, because he stopped moving, just leaned over Xander, bracing himself with his arms. He kissed Xander, soft and slow and exactly like a guy who had also just realized that they had all weekend and a door that locked, and said, "God, yes." Then he paused, his mouth still almost against Xander's, and added, "If you want to."  
  
Xander laughed, because hey, almost nineteen years old, here, how likely was it that he wouldn't want to? Then, still grinning, he echoed Larry: "God, yes." He shifted position, his shirt clinging damply to warm vinyl. "Just not on this beanbag."  
  
"I do have a bed," Larry said, and that made it even more real.  
  
Real, in this case, was a good thing, though, and as Larry moved off him, Xander sat up, starting to unbutton his shirt with shaky fingers, because if they were going to do this right, for once, he wanted it to be without clothes getting in the way.  
  
Huh. And nothing important was supposed to happen around Halloween.  
  


***

  
  
Larry wasn't in bed when Xander woke up. There was one brief moment of  _oh, hell, was I that bad?_ before Xander replayed last night in his head and decided that wasn't possibly it. Sure, there had been things they hadn't gotten around to doing, but what they had done had seemed to go pretty darned well. And from the dazed way Larry had been grinning at him before they went to sleep, Xander was sure he wasn't the only one who had thought so.  
  
Xander rolled over onto his side, and now he could see Larry, lying on his stomach on the floor, wearing a pair of clean--or at least, "different from yesterday"; Larry's laundry standards seemed to be about the same as Xander's own--boxers, his hair wet from the shower. Xander suddenly thought longingly of hot water. He'd sweated in the car on the way here, both from nerves and from running the heater to keep the engine cooler, and he'd sweated a lot more last night, and, okay, he wouldn't say no to some Colgate, either. But getting up and going down the hall to the showers meant he'd actually have to move, and he was comfortable here.  
  
Besides, right this second, he could watch Larry without Larry realizing it. Not that he wasn't allowed to look at Larry--just looking had been a big component of last night, because he had so definitely been wrong, last year, about being straight; straight guys didn't just sit there on a sticky-hot beanbag and stare when another guy took his clothes off in front of them. But this was different: Larry had a big textbook on the floor in front of him, and was going through the pages, marking them with yellow highlighter, and he didn't even think Larry knew he was awake.  
  
Xander craned his neck until he could see Larry's alarm clock. Seven fifty-two a.m. Larry was studying, and it wasn't even eight o'clock on a Saturday morning; even though Xander had promised that he'd stop jumping to stupid conclusions, he couldn't help thinking,  _This is never going to work._  Not if Larry was that seriously into school. Willow didn't even do--okay, Willow never  _had_  homework on Saturday morning, because she'd done it all Friday night, so never mind. Maybe people who were excessively into studying could find something to like about Xander, after all. Opposites were supposed to attract, weren't they?  
  
"You're staring at me," Larry said, not looking up from his book. "I can feel it."  
  
"You're studying at eight in the morning. You've got to expect some staring."  
  
"So, what? You want me to wait until you're up, so I can ignore you to read poli sci? I have a quiz on this at nine o'clock Monday, I can't just skip the homework."  
  
Oh. "You got up early to study so you had more time to hang out with me?"  
  
Larry made a face. "And when you put it that way, it makes me sound like a dork."  
  
 _Oh._  "No," Xander said. "Nothing dorky at all in that. I promise." He leaned over the edge of the bed, and when Larry looked up, Xander kissed him--mouth closed, because it was bad enough  _he_  knew how much he needed to brush his teeth; no point sharing that information. "To tell you the truth, I kind of like it."  
  


***

  
  
Larry was still reading when Xander got back from the shower; he looked up when Xander came in, but then went right back to his book. Xander finished getting dressed, stuffed his dirty clothes back in his bag, and flopped back down on the bed, intending to stay out of the way until Larry was done.  
  
"This sucks," Larry muttered after a while, pushing the book away.  
  
"And thank you for making me glad I  _didn't_  go to college."  
  
"It wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't worried about getting into law school." He sat up, stretching. "My grades in high school were okay, but they need to be better than that here."  
  
"You're the one who wants to be a lawyer," Xander pointed out. "Nobody to blame but yourself."  
  
"Yeah," Larry said. He got up, pulling on a pair of jeans; Xander had to admit that he liked the shirtless, barefoot look. Of course, Xander was having to admit that he liked looking at Larry, period. Good thing for him that Larry didn't mind. "I just hope it's worth the trouble."  
  
"It's what you want," Xander reminded him. To be honest, he kind of envied that. Beyond knowing that he didn't want to go to college, he didn't have much of an idea of what he did want to do now.  
  
"Not really." Larry found a shirt and put it on. "It was just, you remember when we had that career fair in eleventh grade? It came up pretty high on my list, and since I couldn't do what I wanted to, I figured, why not?"  
  
"What did you want to do?" Xander asked. Larry wasn't stupid; Xander couldn't imagine too many jobs that Larry  _couldn't_  do. Except maybe King of the World, or something dumb like that.   
  
"Don't laugh," Larry warned him, and Xander shook his head. "But, okay. I like football. I really like football. And I used to help my uncle Chris coach my cousin's peewee league team, and I liked that, too. So I used to want to be a coach. Not, like, in the NFL," he added quickly. "I'm not that kind of good. Just high school. Junior high if I had to."  
  
Okay. Xander was totally not seeing the Impossible Dream qualities of that one. "And so you're a pre-law major  _why_?"  
  
Larry rolled his eyes. "Yeah, because some school's really going to be thrilled about sending the gay guy into the locker room. They're going to think it's creepy and wrong."  
  
Oh. Xander hadn't thought about it that way. On the other hand-- "It's a lot less creepy and wrong than a teacher asking guys over to her house and giving them alcohol, then trying to mate with them. I mean, there was a thing where she was going to bite our heads off afterward, so it was more 'scary bug-woman' than 'pervert,' but still pretty high on the creep factor." Then he realized that he'd left a key component of his argument out. "Also, you stopped fooling around with high school guys the second we graduated, so it's not like they'd have any  _reason_  to worry."  
  
"Wait," Larry said. "Scary bug woman? When was that?"  
  
Xander decided to let the change of subject go, at least for the moment. "Remember when Dr. Gregory died? Sophomore year?" When Larry nodded, Xander said, "Remember the sub they got to replace him?"  
  
"Nerdy guy. Really obsessed with the margins on our term papers, right?"  
  
"Before him. Miss French?"  
  
Larry's brow furrowed. "No."  
  
Xander laughed. "You really are just  _totally_  gay, aren't you?" That was the only explanation for not remembering Miss French. When she hadn't been a giant bug, she'd been seriously hot.  
  
"Uh,  _yeah_ ," Larry said. "Got a problem with that?"  
  
Xander smirked. "Only in the sense that it means that if Tyra Banks ever comes up to me and says, 'Alexander--'"  
  
Laughing, Larry said, "Alexander?"  
  
"Tyra can call me Alexander if she wants to."  
  
"Can I?"  
  
"Do that thing you did last night and you can call me anything you want," Xander admitted.  
  
"What thi--oh.  _That_  thing." Larry grinned. "I'm going to have to remember that." He sat down on the bed, his hand sliding down from Xander's shoulder down to his lower back, and Xander scooted upward on the bed so that the hand slipped even lower down. He looked back at Larry, grinning innocently; Larry didn't take his hand away.  
  
"Anyway," Xander went on. "If Tyra comes up and says, 'Alexander, I really want to have a threesome with you and your hot boyfriend,' I guess I'm going to have to say no, that's all. I wouldn't call it a problem."  
  
"You mean because it's never going to happen?"  
  
"Hey! Why wouldn't Tyra want me?" He squirmed again, this time turning onto his side so he could see Larry better. "And no, I meant because at least I have the hot boyfriend to console me."  
  
Larry grinned at him. "Besides, I'd say yes, if you really wanted to. I mean, not for just anyone, but Tyra Banks, okay. You'd just have to be in the middle."  
  
"Yeah, right, because that'd be sheer torture." Xander grinned back at him. "See, this is why I... um. Like you so much."  
  
"Because I agree to let you have sex with supermodels? It's just because I know you'd pout for six months if I said no."  
  
"One of the reasons." He let Larry pull him up for a kiss, feeling pretty good about life right then. The weekend was going okay, he was starting to believe that Larry wasn't going to dump him for some frat guy, and he'd managed a pretty good save a minute ago.  
  
There was some stuff he just wasn't going to say, even if it might be true.  
  


***


	3. Thanksgiving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few of the lines in this chapter came from the episode "Pangs" (unsurprisingly, as this chapter is this AU's version of that episode).

You'd think that finding out that your boyfriend spent his day  _falling into a hole in the ground_  would, possibly, encourage you to give that boyfriend some kind of a break. The kind of a break where, maybe, you didn't bitch at him for not wanting to spend Thanksgiving with your family.  
  
Apparently, you'd be wrong. At least, if you were  _Xander's_  boyfriend, and Xander was hoping that he'd be able to make himself keep his mouth under enough control that they ended this conversation with Larry  _still_  being his boyfriend. He might be pissed off at Larry, but he wasn't  _that_  pissed.  
  
"See, that's the problem," Xander said, when Larry paused for breath. "You  _assumed_  I didn't have anything else to do. And, I mean, yeah, that's true for most holidays, but Willow's parents don't do Thanksgiving because her mom says it's politically incorrect, and so for the past, like, nine years, it's been National Xander and Willow Rent Movies and Eat Frozen Pizza Day."  
  
"And you'd rather spend the day with somebody you can see every day than with me?" Larry said. He wasn't yelling, but Xander was pretty sure that was just because he was at home, and he didn't want his family overhearing the argument. Xander's ears thanked him, though. This phone was crappy, and if someone yelled at the other end of the line, Xander's ear was ringing for fifteen minutes after he hung up.  
  
He decided not to mention that it turned out he couldn't see Willow every day, because she was too busy being in college. Larry would probably take that as a sign that Xander should bail on  _her_  for a change, and Xander didn't want to prolong the argument. He was tired and his head ached and had he mentioned that he'd  _fallen into a hole_? "I made plans with her, Larry," Xander said. "If you'd asked me to Thanksgiving a couple of weeks ago, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But you called me two days before Thanksgiving, just assuming that I'd be going to your parents' house, and I'm not going to break my plans just because you  _finally_  got around to inviting me."  
  
"I figured you knew you were invited," Larry said. "How was I supposed to know that you'd go and make plans without me?"  
  
Xander's head was pounding and every muscle in his body ached; he really didn't want to argue about this. He wanted to take a nice hot shower and a handful of Advil, and then go to bed; he must have gotten banged around more today than he'd thought. But if Larry wanted an argument, then he was going to get one. "You're right," he said. "I mean, it's not like I can have anything important going on in my life. After all, I'm not going to college or anything. I'm just here in Sunnydale, waiting for you to come back and visit. You know, whenever it's convenient."  
  
There were a few seconds of silence, long enough that he thought, for a second, that Larry had hung up. Then, when Larry finally started talking, Xander wished he  _had_  hung up. "You know what, Xander? Like I keep telling you, the only person who has a problem with you not going to college is you. No one else cares. I sure as hell don't, so stop putting words in my mouth. Fuck, if you have so much of a problem with me being in college, why don't you just--" Larry broke off again.  
  
His parents should totally take argument lessons from Larry, he thought. It was amazing how angry he could sound without ever raising his voice. "Why don't I just what?" he asked. His voice sounded soft and hesitant, and Xander cringed, not wanting Larry to hear just how much this conversation was starting to freak him out.   
  
"Just--drop it, Xander. I'm tired, I have a term paper to write this weekend, and I just--I wanted to see you. As much as I could, and I  _do_  have to spend Thanksgiving with my parents." He paused again, and in his mind's eye, Xander could picture his shrug. "But it's no big deal. Maybe we shouldn't see each other this weekend."  
  
That wasn't what Xander wanted. Okay, what he wanted most involved painkillers and sleep, but he wanted to see Larry. "There's tomorrow after work. And after tomorrow, I'm off work until Monday. We could--"  
  
"No," Larry said. "We couldn't. I don't want to have this fight, Xander."  
  
"I don't either," Xander pointed out, then coughed. "Look, I feel like crap. I think I breathed too much dust today, or something. I promise I'll be a lot less of a jackass after I get some sleep, okay?"  
  
Larry sighed. "Yeah," he said, finally. "Okay."  
  
"I'll call you tomorrow night?"  
  
"I have that paper to write," he said. Xander might not have been in college, but he was smart enough to recognize bullshit when he heard it.  
  
"So you'll take a study break," he said. "Fifteen minutes of Xander time."  
  
"Thirty," Larry countered. Xander grinned. They were going to be okay.  
  
"I might be able to work that in." Once they'd said goodbye, Xander sat up, intending to go in the bathroom and get a shower. The room spun disturbingly, though, and he flopped back down on the bed, closing his eyes. Maybe he'd just take a nap first. He'd probably feel a lot better after some sleep.  
  
And maybe, he thought, if he kicked in some money for the utility bill, his dad would consider turning the heat up. He knew it was November, but it was California, and it really shouldn't be this cold in here. He pulled up the extra blanket from the foot of the bed, hoping that helped for now.  
  
The phone rang a few minutes later, but Xander let the answering machine pick it up. It was Willow, explaining that Buffy had decided to cook Thanksgiving dinner for everyone, and everyone meant him and Larry, too. "He won't come," Xander muttered, closing his eyes again. Still, he'd pass the message on.  
  
Tomorrow. After he'd had some sleep.  
  


***

  
  
"Some" sleep apparently, to his body, meant "a lot of sleep," because he didn't wake up until his alarm got tired of going off, an hour after it started. He wouldn't mind that so much, aside from the late-for-work thing, if he hadn't woken up still feeling totally exhausted. It seemed to be taking an unbelievable amount of energy just to move; actually taking a shower had been so draining that what he wanted more than anything else was another nap.  
  
But he'd managed, and even if he was late for work, he was dressed and working on getting his shoes on. He'd be out the door soon enough--better late than never--and maybe the foreman would give him a break considering what had happened yesterday.  
  
It wasn't until he heard somebody calling his name that he realized he'd just been sitting there staring blankly at the work boot in his hand for a while.  
  
"Xander?" Larry said again, in a tone that suggested there had been a lot more times before that. "Are you okay? I went by to see you at work, but you weren't there."  
  
"Running late," Xander said, shrugging. "I'm going now."  
  
Larry came closer, frowning at him. "You look like shit."  
  
"I feel like shit," Xander admitted. "But I'm on my way."  
  
The hand Larry put on his forehead felt wonderfully cool, he had to admit. "You're running a fever," Larry said. "I'm pretty sure going to work would be a bad idea."  
  
Larry kind of had a point there, Xander had to admit. "I don't feel that bad," he argued, though, because he didn't hate this job and kind of wanted to keep it.  
  
"Oh, when you said 'I feel like shit,' you meant in a good way?" Larry shook his head. "Get back into bed. I'll bring you the phone so you can call in sick."  
  
Larry was bigger than him and could probably make him go back to bed, Xander rationalized. Even if he wouldn't do that, he  _could_ , and so clearly, the wise thing to do would be to lie back down and listen to him. He dropped the shoe to the floor and unbuttoned his jeans, realizing that he really didn't want to stand up to take them off the rest of the way. He could sleep wearing them, he decided. It wouldn't hurt.  
.  
"Oh, for God's sake," Larry said, coming over, phone in hand, and helping Xander get the jeans off. Once Xander was in bed, Larry gave him the phone. "You call in sick," he said. "I'll be right back."  
  
"Where are you going?" Never mind that they'd been fighting last night. He really didn't want to be left alone when he was feeling this miserable. He dialed the number to the office at work while he waited for Larry's answer.  
  
"The store. I'll be back with Tylenol and orange juice in just a few minutes."  
  
The receptionist had already answered, so Xander just waved as Larry went out the door.  
  
He didn't know how long it took Larry to get back from the supermarket; all he knew was that when he woke up, the phone still in his hand, Larry was sitting over on the couch with a stack of books, and there was a glass of orange juice and a couple of pills on the table next to his bed. "Take those," Larry said when Xander started to sit up. "And don't get out of bed. The only place you're allowed to go is the bathroom."  
  
"Who died and made you the boss of me?" Xander mumbled, but he took the pills anyway.  
  
"From the looks of things, you did." Larry grinned at him.  
  
Xander would have thrown a pillow at him, but when he picked it up, it felt weirdly heavy and he decided not to bother. "I thought you had a paper to write."  
  
"What do you think I'm doing?" He waved toward the pile of books on the couch. "I was going to the library today to get some peace and quiet, so I had all my stuff with me."  
  
Xander took a few more careful sips of juice; it hurt to swallow, but he was thirsty. "That reminds me. Why were you looking for me at work?"  
  
Larry didn't say anything for a minute, and Xander wondered if maybe he was losing his voice and Larry hadn't heard him. Then Larry said, "Why do you think? We had a fight, remember? I wanted to apologize."  
  
"Oh," Xander said. "I'm, um. I'm sorry, too."  
  
"Yeah, I know." Larry pushed the books off his lap and stood up. "It's nearly one o'clock. Want me to make you some soup?" He grinned. "It's from a can, so I'm pretty sure I can't screw it up."  
  
Xander shook his head. "The only way to heat it up is on the dryer, and soup never works out that way." Spaghetti-Os weren't that bad cold, so if they never got really hot, they were still edible. Soup, on the other hand, had tasted gross when he'd tried.  
  
"I thought about that. They had those hot-pot things at the supermarket, so I got one." He shrugged. "I have one in my dorm room, and it works okay. Now, do you want some soup?"  
  
"If I say no, what happens?"  
  
"I make it anyway, and you complain about how bossy I am while you eat it. Face it, Xander, I'm taking care of you whether you want it or not."  
  
"I don't want you catching whatever I have, though."  
  
"I thought about  _that_ , too," Larry said. "I bought some of that antibacterial hand gel stuff, and I'll wash my hands a lot, and it'll be fine. Besides, I hardly ever even get a cold. I'm not going to get sick."  
  
Xander thought about arguing; he really did. But he felt awful, and it was kind of nice to have Larry here making sure he was okay. He thought about saying that, but he couldn't think of a way to put it without sounding like a complete idiot, so he just said, "I guess I'll let you."  
  


***

  
  
"You don't know Buffy like I do," Xander argued, slumped in the passenger seat of Larry's car. "She's really gung-ho about this Thanksgiving thing. If I don't show up, I'm going to wish whatever this is had killed me."  
  
"You seriously expect me to leave you over at Giles' place when you're this sick?" Larry shook his head, frowning. "We're going to go and get your prescription filled, and then I really think I should take you home. You don't need turkey and stuffing. You need antibiotics and bed rest."  
  
"The doctor just gave me that prescription because he didn't know what the hell is wrong with me," Xander pointed out. They should have known that any  _good_  doctor wouldn't be working at the urgent care center on Thanksgiving morning. This guy had checked Xander out, finally admitting that Xander was definitely sick, but that he didn't have any clue what was wrong with him. He'd written Xander a prescription for amoxicillin, told him to get some rest, and suggested that he go see his regular doctor as soon as he could, none of which was doing a damn thing for how terrible Xander felt right now.  
  
At least Larry still didn't seem to be getting sick, and the doctor  _had_  told him he was doing the right thing with the hand-washing and the anti-bacterial goop and the limiting actual physical contact with Xander. Which, as much as it sucked since Larry would be heading back to Los Angeles on Sunday night, was actually kind of okay with Xander, because he was either too hot or too cold all the time, and he  _hurt_ , and he wasn't all that crazy about clothes or blankets touching him, let alone another human being.  
  
"Yeah, so you being sick with a mystery disease? Perfect reason for you  _not_  to spend Thanksgiving anywhere but in bed." Larry glanced over at him, frowning. "Seriously, Xander, this is freaking me out. I still think we ought to try the emergency room."  
  
He shook his head. "Just take me to Giles' place. If I'm going to die, I want turkey first."  
  


***

  
  
"Syphilis?" Xander exclaimed, trying to lift his head up from the couch. It took a lot more work than he was really prepared to do, so he gave up.  
  
"Do  _not_  look at me," Larry said. "I'm not responsible for this."  
  
"Nobody's looking at you," Giles snapped. Xander was starting to think holidays were the same no matter who you were spending them with; people started losing their tempers and biting other people's heads off and completely losing all perspective. Because he was the one with  _syphilis_  here, not to mention smallpox and who knew what else. Everyone really needed to focus on that and not on whatever else they were talking about.  
  
"Well, but this is probably mystical, and it'll all go away as soon as--" Willow began, but Xander interrupted her.  
  
"As soon as what?" Whatever it was, they needed to do it, and soon, because this  _sucked_.  
  
"Can't we take him to the hospital?" Larry said. "If we tell them what we think he has, maybe they can--"  
  
"And how are we going to convince them we know what we're talking about?" Giles said. "Or explain how he could have contracted smallpox?"  
  
Larry sighed. "There has to be something we can do."  
  
"Maybe there's a Wiccan spell that can cure it," Willow suggested, "something regular medicine doesn't know. Ooh, there was a potion!" She picked up a book and flipped through it, pulling out a piece of paper and beginning to read. "Sage, salt..." She frowned a little. "Onion?"  
  
"That's the stuffing," Buffy said.  
  
"Oh, God." Xander closed his eyes. Unless sage and onion stuffing was a magical cure for syphilis, he was definitely doomed.  
  
Larry crouched down next to the couch, reaching for Xander's hand. "We'll think of something," he said. "You know we will."  
  
"Yeah, I know," Xander said, even if he didn't actually know that, at all. "You should probably go," he went on. "You're going to be late for Thanksgiving dinner."  
  
He shook his head. "I'm not going anywhere, idiot. Not while you're sick."  
  
"Good," Buffy said, handing Larry a wooden spoon. "You can make the sweet potatoes."  
  


***

  
  
They were supposed to be hurrying. Buffy and Giles were in trouble, and Xander hadn't had a lot of faith in Angel  _before_  he turned up lurking and stealing bikes and still swearing he wasn't evil. So in that respect, Xander ought to be annoyed that Larry's mom had called his cell phone, and Larry was now leaning against a tree and arguing with her. On the other hand, Xander wasn't feeling all that great, and taking a short break sounded good to him. He really shouldn't have come along, but Spike had creeped him out. Besides, he had to do  _something_  besides sit around and take bets on whether the smallpox or the malaria killed him first.  
  
Willow gave Xander a look. "We need to get back," she said.  
  
"You need to get back," Xander pointed out. "Larry needs to get back. What am I going to do, cough on people?" He shrugged. "Angel's calling to warn them, and we'll get there as fast as we can. It's only been, like, a minute, anyway."  
  
"I know," Larry was saying into the phone. "Mom, I get it. And I'm sorry, but Xander's sick, and I'm not leaving him alone right now." He sighed loudly. "I have to go, Mom. I'll talk to you later." He hung up, sticking the phone back into his pocket. "Come on," he said to Willow, reaching over and slinging Xander's arm over his shoulder. "And you, don't argue," he said. "Save your energy for the guy who gave you syphilis."  
  
"That would sound really bad if I didn't know--" Xander shook his head. "Nope, still sounds bad."  
  


***

  
  
"I still can't believe you told Buffy that Angel was here," Larry said through a mouthful of eggs. Thanksgiving dinner had been good, but they had cleaned up Giles' place and eaten dinner, and then Buffy had yelled at them all for not telling her Angel was in Sunnydale--which, Xander had to admit, was probably a fair thing for her to be angry about, but he, at least, had had way more important things on his mind for a while--and then Willow had convinced them all to play Scattergories because there was no way Buffy was getting a bus to Los Angeles on Thanksgiving night. And after all that, it was seriously late, he and Larry were hungry again, and they'd decided to stop by the diner out near the highway instead of going home.  
  
Xander shrugged. "I can. If there's a way to stick my foot in my mouth, I'll find it." He poured ketchup on his hash browns and reached for the salt. "And at least she was a lot madder at Angel than she was at us for not telling her. You, on the other hand, are a dead man when you get home."  
  
Larry sighed. "Mom won't kill me," he said. "She's just going to yell. A lot."  
  
"You should have gone home," Xander said. "We'd have managed, honest."  
  
"Who would have stirred the sweet potatoes?"  
  
"The sweet potatoes," Xander reminded him, "were the only part of dinner that sucked. You could get  _drunk_  from them."  
  
"I swear she said half a stick of butter and two cups of brandy." Larry stabbed his second egg with his fork, and for a second, Xander thought,  _Forty years from now, I'm still going to be watching his egg yolk run into the jelly on his toast, and it's still going to be gross._  Just for a second, and then he tried not to think about it any more. They'd only been dating for six months. It was way too early to be thinking about "forty years from now."  
  
"Anyway, seriously, you're going to get  _so much crap_  from your mom about this." And probably not just his mom, either. Xander wasn't sure what the penalties were for a Blaisdell who didn't show up for a family gathering, but he wouldn't have been surprised if there was torture involved.   
  
"I know," Larry said. "But what was I supposed to do, leave you there half-dead?"  
  
"That was kind of where I was going with this, yeah." It wasn't like Larry had done anything. Okay, except bring Xander Tylenol and juice and soup, and he dimly recalled cool washcloths on his forehead, and a lot of hand-holding and telling him that he wasn't going to die, that they had Giles and Willow and Buffy all working on fixing this. So maybe he'd done a lot, after all.  
  
"No fucking  _way_." Larry looked over at him, with this weird intense look that had Xander afraid, for a minute, that he'd managed to seriously piss Larry off. "You total dumbass," he said. "You were sick. You needed me. I wasn't going anywhere."  
  
Xander just blinked at him for a second, trying to take in not just the words, but the tone of Larry's voice, quiet and serious like he'd been pronouncing absolute truth or something. "Oh," Xander said. "I, um. didn't realize--"  
  
"Maybe you should have," he said. "Maybe you should have thought for a second that maybe, just maybe, this thing where I'm in love with you? Means I want to be around when you really need me."  
  
"Sorry," Xander mumbled, because he probably should have thought, but on the other hand, the past few days had sucked, and maybe he could blame this on lingering aftereffects of mystical syphilis. Then he blinked again. "Wait, you're  _what_?"  
  
"Shit. Look, it's no big deal, I shouldn't have said--"  
  
"Yeah," Xander interrupted him. "Yeah, you should have. If you meant it." He tried to tell himself that there was a good chance Larry hadn't meant it, that it was just a thing he'd said without really thinking about what it might have sounded like to Xander. And before Xander decided whether he was thrilled or terrified or both, he wanted to know if there was any reason to even be considering it.  
  
Larry looked at him for a second, like Xander had just asked him the stupidest question in the world, and then said, "Yeah. Of course I meant it. What, have you just not been  _paying attention_?"  
  
"Maybe not," he said. But it wasn't like Larry had ever  _said_  it, anyway, and that hadn't bothered Xander. It had been fine. After all, they hadn't been dating  _that_  long, and it wasn't like they spent a lot of time sitting around talking about how they felt.  
  
"Anyway, it's not a big thing. Don't worry about it. It's okay if you don't--you don't have to say it. Or even think it. We're still good."  
  
Xander rolled his eyes. "What if I do think it? I might even say it." The "thrilled or terrified?" question was definitely coming down on the side of "both," but he figured it wasn't going to get any less scary by waiting. And it wasn't like he didn't  _know_  how he felt already. He just hadn't said it; it wasn't that he didn't  _know_. "Because apparently, I'm not the only one who wasn't paying attention," he said. "I love you, too."  
  
"God, we sound like a Lifetime movie," Larry grumbled, but he was grinning, and he stretched his leg out under the table so that his foot could twine around Xander's.  
  
"I won't tell anyone if you won't," he said, grinning back. "Deal?"  
  
"Deal," Larry said. "We will never speak of this again."  
  
"Maybe not  _never_?" he said. "Just not very often?"  
  
Larry considered that for a moment, and then stuck out his hand for Xander to shake.  
  


***


	4. Christmas

There were a lot of good things about dating Larry, although Xander wasn't about to make a list or anything. But one of the better ones was that if Xander got tired of listening to the yelling from upstairs and picked up the phone, it didn't even matter that he knew he couldn't raise his voice to be heard over all the background noise without his dad opening the basement door and shouting that if Xander didn't shut up, he'd come down and shut him up. Larry just said, "Get some clothes together. I'm coming to pick you up," and didn't need an explanation.  
  
And while, if Xander had been able to make himself heard, he could have pointed out that he had a car and could get to Larry's by himself, he was glad he hadn't; after he'd shoved some clothes into a bag and gone to wait outside, Xander realized that his mom's car was parked behind his, kind of sideways, and there was no way he would be able to get out of the driveway without going in and asking for her keys. Instead, he just sat on the back of his car, watching for headlights.  
  
Larry didn't ask any questions after Xander threw his bag in the backseat and got in the car, either, except for, "My house okay, or do you want to go somewhere else?"  
  
"Anywhere's fine." Xander looked straight ahead of him, concentrating on breathing in and out. Damn it, getting out of the house should be enough. He wasn't a kid any more, and besides, nothing had happened to him. They'd been fine with him staying in the basement and avoiding them, Uncle Rory--whose first action on getting out of jail was apparently to drink himself stupid--and everybody else who had turned up to celebrate the holidays in classic Harris family style. Nobody had said anything to him on his way out, even. Everything was fine.  
  
Larry didn't put the car in gear, though; he turned toward Xander, instead, his hand coming up to touch the side of Xander's face. "Hey," he said. "It's going to be okay." Xander nodded, and Larry said, "I'm warning you, if we go to my house, you're going to have to put up with my parents."  
  
"I like your parents," Xander pointed out. And it'd be kind of...interesting, at least, to see what a normal family was like at Christmas. Jesse's parents had always taken the family skiing, and Willow was Jewish, and Buffy's family was not normal just by  _definition_ , what with the Slayer thing, so he didn't have a lot of experience.  
  
"Okay," Larry said. "My house, where my mom will feed you."  
  
Since Xander only dimly remembered eating some canned ravioli when he got home from work at eleven, food sounded like a good idea. Crowds, on the other hand, didn't, and Xander still remembered Labor Day. "How many people are going to be there?"  
  
"Tonight? Nobody. Tomorrow afternoon, everybody will show up for dinner and presents and stuff, but Christmas Eve is always pretty quiet. Just us. Sometimes Grandma Millie, but she's spending Christmas Eve with my aunt this year."  
  
"Too bad," Xander said. "I like her."  
  
"Yeah, I've heard." Larry grinned. "You are totally sucking up to my great-grandma."  
  
"I'm not," he argued. "I just figured it was probably really boring for her, living by herself, and so, you know." He shrugged. So he'd gone by a couple of times. She was a pretty cool old lady. Besides, she played poker, gin rummy, and Monopoly with the exact same cutthroat enthusiasm, which Xander had to respect.  
  
"It's okay, you know," Larry said. "I think it's pretty cool."  
  
There really wasn't anything to say to that, but that was okay; Larry didn't seem to expect him to say anything. He just drove them across town, parking his car on the street in front of his parents' house. "Otherwise," he said, "I'm just going to have to get up early and move it."  
  
It wasn't as late as he'd been thinking, Xander noticed, glancing as his watch as they went inside and saw that it was only about eight. He hadn't even made it through two hours of his family; his dad hadn't gotten home until after six. Still, that was good; he didn't want to think that he was keeping Larry's parents up late just so they could be polite.  
  
And they were definitely being polite; Larry's mom smiled at him when they came in, but she looked tired and tense, and Xander was pretty sure the last thing they wanted was him invading their holiday. It wasn't like they could be thrilled about him and Larry still being together, after all, even if Larry kept reassuring him that they liked him. "If I'm in the way," Xander began, but Mr. Blaisdell interrupted him.  
  
"You're not," he said firmly. "We're happy to have you here. Sit down and make yourself at home."  
  
Xander smiled. "Thanks. I just, you know. Holiday. Family. I don't want to--"  
  
"I want you here," Larry said. "Now, do what my dad said and sit. I'll be right back." Xander grinned and sat down; Larry disappeared into the kitchen.  
  
That left Xander sitting there with Larry's family, which wasn't exactly the most relaxing thing ever, since nobody was saying much. Larry's dad leaned over and poked Josh in the side; he'd been playing his Game Boy and not really paying attention to anybody else. "Take Xander's bag up to your room, kiddo."  
  
Josh looked up, frowning. "How come he has to stay in my room?"  
  
"I don't have to stay," Xander said. He'd packed clothes, sure, but mostly because Larry had told him to, and Xander had been more or less on autopilot. He could sleep in his parents' backyard, just like he did every Christmas. Why screw with a holiday tradition, even if it did suck?  
  
"Nonsense," Mrs. Blaisdell said. "You're welcome to stay. And he's staying in your room because he can't stay in Larry's," she said, pointing to the stairs. "Take the bag up, please. And you might as well get your shower while you're up there, since there'll be three of you sharing your bathroom tonight."  
  
"Fine," Josh grumbled. "But I get the top bunk." Since Xander didn't especially want to have to climb a ladder to get into bed, he didn't argue. Josh got up from the couch and picked up Xander's bag, heading upstairs with it, just as Larry came back carrying two mugs.  
  
"Mom's all about tradition at Christmas," he said. "I'd have asked you if you wanted something else, but it's cider or death." He grinned at Xander, handing him a mug, and then waving toward the coffee table. "And there's enough food for an army here; she doesn't get the concept of 'four people' around the holidays." Larry was smiling, but his mother wasn't; Xander remembered them joking around at Labor Day, and wondered what had changed.  
  
Maybe it was him. It was obvious they'd been having a nice family Christmas before Xander had called. Maybe he shouldn't have, but he'd needed to get away from his house, and Larry was the first person he'd thought to call. Larry was  _always_  the first person he thought to call, these days, unless it was for something evil that he needed Buffy to kill, and fast. He looked over at Larry, turning his head so that Larry's parents couldn't see him, and mouthed, "Should I go?"  
  
Larry's response was a definite shake of the head. He set his own mug down on the table before sitting down next to Xander on the couch and resting his hand on Xander's knee. "It's okay if Xander's here for Christmas, right?" he said, and Xander cringed. Of course it was going to be okay now; Larry's parents were hardly going to say no with Xander sitting right there in front of them.  
  
This time, Larry's mom's smile looked a lot friendlier. "Absolutely," she said. "You know what holidays here are like; one more person isn't going to be in the way."  
  
"Um. Thanks," Xander said, feeling awkward again. But then Larry's dad reached over and turned on the radio, and at least with Christmas music playing, it didn't seem so noticeable that nobody was talking.  
  
Xander didn't want to talk, for once. He wanted to sit here, his hand covering Larry's, and forget that he'd left behind a house full of yelling, mostly drunk, people. It didn't even matter if Larry's parents weren't crazy about him. His  _own_  parents weren't all that crazy about him, after all, and they were  _supposed_ to be. And Larry's family was a lot nicer, even to people they didn't really like.  
  
But when Josh came back down--still playing his Game Boy--Xander saw an excuse to get out of the room for a few minutes. "Okay if I go up and unpack a little?" he said. "I could put the presents under the tree." Xander hadn't planned on coming over here until the day after tomorrow, but he'd bought presents anyway, for Larry and his parents and his brother and Grandma Millie, because he kind of wanted to prove that he might be Larry's loser non-college-going boyfriend, but he could at least remember to get people Christmas presents. And even he was impressed with himself for remembering to bring them with him tonight.   
  
"Yeah, sure," Larry said.  
  
"Bottom bunk," Josh insisted, and then scowled at Larry. "Why does your stupid boyfriend have to sleep in my room?" he asked again.  
  
Larry shrugged. "Because Mom and Dad don't want him in my room, and the guest room's already made up for people tomorrow night. Don't worry, squirt, when you have a girlfriend--"  
  
"I already have a girlfriend,  _duh_ ," Josh muttered scornfully, and as Xander went up the stairs, he could still hear Larry and Josh arguing about whether a girl who let you sit next to her on the bus actually counted as a girlfriend or not.  
  
Xander stayed upstairs for a while; there really wasn't any way for him to unpack, but he put his toothbrush and toothpaste in the bathroom, and got his sweats and t-shirt out of his bag in case Josh was already asleep when Xander got ready for bed. Then he lay down on the bunk for a while, just appreciating the peace and quiet; he could still hear the Christmas music from downstairs, and the rise and fall of voices, but it was all just background noise.  
  
Okay, obviously there was something going on he didn't really grasp, between Larry and his parents, but it couldn't be all that major. Larry would have said something if it was, and he would have wanted to go somewhere other than home. So it was just one of those family things Xander had mostly learned about from TV, and it would probably blow over by tomorrow, and he shouldn't worry about it.   
  
He should focus on the good part: he was here, and he was going to be here for Christmas. With Larry. He liked--okay, they had gone beyond "like," and it hadn't even killed them to admit it. He kind of wanted to spend a lot of Christmases with Larry--he wouldn't go so far as to say "forever," but he was going to go with "for a long time."  
  
So that was good. And he liked Larry's family, even when they got loud and crazy and overwhelming, and so Christmas was actually going to be good. And maybe tomorrow after he left here, since he didn't have to work, he'd go by and see Buffy for a little while, and drop in on Willow--even if she didn't do Christmas, she wasn't at school and he wasn't at work, so it would be a good time to hang out with her. And that would make this the first Christmas he could remember that he'd really enjoyed.  
  
But finally, he decided that he could only stretch out "unpacking" for so long. He got the presents out and tucked them under his arm, starting down the stairs.  
  
He was just in time to hear Larry snapping, "For God's sake, Mom, this isn't about Xander!" Xander stopped on the second stair, out of sight from anyone downstairs. He wouldn't ordinarily eavesdrop, but they were talking about him. It was fair. Or at least understandable.  
  
"You keep saying that, son," Larry's dad said, "but to us, it sounds like that's exactly what it's about. Your mother and I just want to be sure you're making decisions based on something other than--"  
  
"Could we just  _not_  talk about this while Xander's here, okay?" Larry's parents must have agreed with him, because the voices stopped, and Xander started downstairs again, making a point to make as much noise as he could.  
  
When he got to the living room, everything looked pretty normal; if he hadn't overheard the argument, then he wouldn't have even known it had been going on. Larry's mom got up and helped him arrange the presents under the tree, and Larry's dad started fiddling with the radio because there was apparently some kind of alien mind-control ray forcing every station in town to play "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" at the same time, and Larry--  
  
Larry got up and went into the kitchen, and then Xander heard the back door open and close. He turned to look at Mrs. Blaisdell. "I'm, uh. I should probably go after him," he said. He didn't wait for an answer, because honestly, it didn't matter what she said. Larry had come to get him this evening without even stopping to think about it; this was basically the same thing. Whatever was going on between Larry and his parents, and whether or not it was about Xander, he had to at least try to help.  
  
Larry was sitting out on the deck, on the steps that led down to the yard. He looked up when the door opened, and Xander thought, or imagined anyway, that when Larry saw it was him, his shoulders relaxed a little bit. "Just me," Xander said.  
  
Larry scooted over a little on the step to make room for Xander to sit next to him. Xander did, sliding his arm around Larry's waist and pulling him closer. "I'm not asking," Xander said. "So if you don't want to talk, that's okay, because like I said, I'm not asking. But if you do want to..."  
  
For a little while, Larry didn't say anything, just leaned in closer to Xander. Then he said, "You know, there's a neat thing about the stairs in our house. You can stand up at the top and hear pretty much everything anyone's saying in the living room, and nobody has any idea you're there." He looked at Xander, forcing a weak smile. "Except if somebody's been  _listening_  for you to come back down for the past ten minutes, in which case, you're totally busted, Xander Harris."  
  
"I heard my name," Xander confessed. "And, hey, it's not like I already didn't know your parents weren't crazy about me."  
  
"Dude, how many times do I have to tell you they like you? You  _visited my mom's grandma in the nursing home_. You're officially the best boyfriend ever." Then, awkwardly, he said, "I mean, that's what my parents think. Not that I don't think--Oh, fuck, the babbling thing is contagious." He buried his face in his hands for a minute, and Xander was afraid things were worse than he'd suspected, and Larry was completely breaking down about them. Then he realized that Larry was laughing.  
  
Xander smacked him on the arm. "It's not my fault you sound like an idiot," he said, and Larry looked up again, still snickering.  
  
"Whose fault is it? I never did that until I met you."  
  
"You met me in kindergarten," Xander pointed out. "You never did a lot of things until you met me. Like tying your shoes."  
  
"You know what I meant," Larry argued, but at least he didn't sound as upset any more, and Xander would bicker like this for half the night if it kept Larry from sounding miserable. "Anyway. My parents like you fine. They even quit trying to convince me I should date other guys while I was in college." Xander hadn't known that, but he figured there had probably never been a good time for Larry to bring it up. Still, it was nice to know. "So stop worrying about my parents. Except in the sense that I can see my mom gearing up to start sensitively nagging you into coming out to  _your_  parents." He shrugged. "I haven't really told them what your parents are like, so she doesn't get it, really."  
  
"I still have a lot of saving up to do before I can afford to move out," Xander said, and Larry shrugged again.  
  
"Yeah, I know," he said. "Anyway, I meant what I said inside. This doesn't have anything to do with you. Or even them, really. It's just a me thing, and the only reason it's a big deal at all is that they're trying to make it into one."  
  
"So what is it?" Xander asked. It was chilly enough now that he could see their breath coming out in white puffs; he slid a little closer to Larry, who always felt like a furnace anyway.  
  
Larry shook his head. "I can't--" He sighed. "I could tell you. I want to tell you, and I'm going to, I promise. I just... I'm not ready to, yet. I need to get everything straightened out in my head, and then I promise I'll explain everything." His hand was on Xander's knee again, sliding a little farther up his thigh, and Xander squirmed on the hard wooden step. This was very much not cool; the Blaisdells seemed like the kind of people to stick their heads out the back door to make sure everything was okay. "It's nothing bad, I promise," Larry went on, and Xander realized that he'd completely lost the thread of the conversation for a second there.  
  
"Okay," Xander said, and then, even though he knew he was going to hate himself for it, "We really shouldn't be--"  
  
Chuckling, Larry said, "No shit." He didn't move his hand away, though, and he leaned in to kiss Xander, slowly and gently. "But I'm pretty sure that my parents' 'not under our roof' rule doesn't apply to kissing." He grinned at Xander. "And I really don't want to go back inside yet, do you?"  
  
Xander told himself that Larry's parents would probably recognize that there was probably kissing, at least, going on back here, and wouldn't come out without some warning. "No," he said hesitantly, pulling back from Larry. "But I don't want your parents to think that I'm corrupting their first-born son."  
  
"My parents trust me," Larry said. "And, um, they already know I'm kind of corrupted. At least, my mom knows, so my dad probably does too. They're just weird about the not-in-the-house-until-you're-married thing." Then he paused, frowning. "I wonder how that's going to work?" He shrugged. "Anyway, it's not like I actually  _want_  to have sex with my kid brother in the next room."  
  
"No," Xander agreed. "A million times no."  
  
"Okay," Larry said. "So my parents aren't coming outside, and even if they did, they wouldn't freak out if they saw us kissing. And that's all we're going to do." Xander looked down at Larry's hand, which had stayed pretty solidly in place on Xander's leg, and Larry grinned. "Okay, but they won't see that because our backs are to the door, and I can move it away really fast." He did, and Xander's thigh suddenly felt kind of cold.  
  
It wasn't Larry's hand that was the real problem; it was Larry's  _moving_  hand, which was back on Xander's leg, and which Xander didn't object to, but also didn't have a chance in hell of not  _reacting_  to. "You're an evil tempter," Xander said. "Tempting me with your manly wiles. And also your manly hands."  
  
"Yeah, I know," Larry said. "Don't tell me you're complaining?"  
  
What the hell, Xander decided; he could always sit outside until standing up wouldn't be embarrassing. He grinned, sliding over to kiss Larry again.  
  


***

  
  
Whatever was going on with Larry and his parents, they'd obviously decided to ignore it for the sake of Christmas. Thanks to sharing a room with a twelve-year-old, Xander had woken up before dawn, but at least he wasn't the only one. By six-thirty in the morning, Larry's family were all sitting in the kitchen, listening to Josh complain that his mother had  _dumb_  rules about eating breakfast before opening Christmas presents.  
  
"It's your own fault, moron," Larry said in between mouthfuls of cinnamon roll. Then, to Xander, he explained, "We used to do presents first, but after the third year in a row where Josh got too cranky because he hadn't eaten and threw the temper tantrum to end all temper tantrums--and I'm not talking about when he was two, either, he was, like, eight--Mom made us eat first."  
  
Xander was okay with that. He wasn't in any hurry; he was going to give Larry his present now, because he decided it would be a lot less embarrassing to do it with a smaller audience, but this wasn't  _his_  family or his Christmas tree, and so there wasn't any excitement. "What time does everyone else start showing up?" he said.  
  
Larry shrugged. "Ten or eleven, usually." He grinned. "You have four hours to refresh your memory. When everyone gets here, you're getting a pop quiz."  
  
"On what, your family?"  
  
"Yup." Still grinning, he went on, in a voice like a game show host: "There are no penalties for wrong answers. Correct answers earn you points you can trade in for valuable prizes."  
  
Laughing, Xander said, "Okay, I like the sound of that, but you remember how I kind of sucked at school?"  
  
"Let's start off with an easy question," Larry said. "Which Blaisdell brother is cooler, Larry or Joshua?" He started humming the  _Jeopardy_  music under his breath, while Xander pretended to have to think his answer over carefully.  
  
"Time's up, Mr. Harris. What is your answer?"  
  
"Um. I'm going to have to go with Larry."  
  
From across the table, Josh made a buzzing noise. "Wrong answer!" he said, even as Larry grinned and gave him a thumbs-up.  
  
"See?" Larry said. "There's nothing to it."  
  
Xander grinned at him, because he was starting to think Larry was right.  
  


***

  
  
By four o'clock, though, Xander had totally changed his mind. Things had been going pretty well--Larry's parents had said nice things about the box of assorted cheese and crackery things, which was probably lame but seemed like a safe enough present for people he didn't even really know that well; Josh had been happy enough with the CD Xander had bought on Larry's suggestion; and the stuff he'd gotten Larry had gone over pretty well. At least, the part he'd given Larry now--the CD and the shirt, stuff it was okay for his parents to see. The rest of his present would wait: the small, sturdy canvas pouch, the right size to fit into a backpack and easy to get into quickly, that held a stake, a cross, and a plastic spray bottle of holy water, because Xander worried. Not hugely, but it was always there, somewhere down in the back of his mind. Any time he stopped worrying, all he had to do was look at the tiny scar on Larry's neck, realize it could have been so much worse, and he'd find a whole new supply of worry to get him through the next few days.  
  
So everything was going fine, and a lot of Larry's relatives remembered him from Labor Day and were friendly, like Xander really did belong there. That, of course, was when Xander was unlucky enough to wind up in the kitchen at the same time as Larry's asshole Uncle Mike.  
  
Really, Xander thought, as asshole relatives went, Mike wasn't all that impressive. All he managed to do was to give Xander a look like he was more disgusting than the corn casserole everyone had pretended to eat at Christmas dinner, and to mutter, "In my day, nobody went around being  _proud_  of being a pervert."  
  
That really might have hurt somebody else, but Xander was a Harris, and for his family, that was  _amateur night_ , especially coming from somebody Xander didn't even know. He figured, given everything Larry had said, that nobody was really going to care if Xander smarted off to Uncle Mike, so he just flashed the same smile he gave whiny customers at work and said, "Jealous?"  
  
Which shut him up long enough for Xander to snag a handful of cashews and a can of soda and head off to the living room, because he'd been volunteered to keep some of the smaller Blaisdells from tearing the house down in their new-toys-and-too-much-sugar frenzy.  
  
In the living room, he found: two little girls who were playing with Barbies, one crying toddler demanding a cookie, a handful of older kids playing videogames, and one person who was way too old to be in the kiddy zone. Also, Xander didn't recognize him at all, and he thought the red hair would have made him stand out.  
  
"Hey," Xander said, waving at the guy, who looked like he was a few years older than Xander. "Which one of the rugrats is yours?"  
  
"None," the guy said, "Thank God. I just came in here to, um." He grinned, a little sheepishly. "Hide?"  
  
And now Xander knew who he had to be, even if he didn't remember having seen him at dinner. Larry's cousin Ruth, Jeanna's sister, had brought her fiancé to his first family gathering. This had to be him; it totally explained both the unfamiliarity and the guy's look of terror.  
  
He grinned at the guy. "Yeah, they're like that at first," he said. "It gets better, I swear." He flopped down on the couch, scooping up the wailing two-year-old and discovering that apparently, being held was a reasonable substitute for a cookie. Xander didn't think he was particularly good with kids, and he definitely wasn't crazy about them, but at least he could keep them out of everybody's hair for a while. "I'm Xander," he said. "I'm here with Larry."  
  
"Yeah," the guy said. "Ruthie pointed you out. I think it was some kind of test to see if I'd freak," he said, sighing. "I'm Justin, and I guess I better get used to this."  
  
"They're actually not that bad," Xander said consolingly.  
  
"Right," Justin said. "There's like a hundred people staring at you, and you have to remember who everyone is and how they're related to your girlfriend and whether they've just said something obnoxious to her about her GED, and this is Christmas in  _hell_."  
  
"I've seen worse," Xander said, not mentioning that most of the scarier moments in his life had involved demons.  
  
"Yeah, well, I haven't."  
  
Xander grinned. "Why don't you handle kiddy patrol? None of them care who you are, and all you have to do is make sure the house doesn't fall down." He picked up the baby from his lap and plunked him down next to Justin. "You don't even have to change diapers. Just go out back and yell for their mom," he said, repeating what Larry's Aunt Kate had told him a few minutes ago, then adding, "It's a great excuse to hide."  
  
Justin considered it for a minute, then nodded. "Yeah. Okay. Thanks. And if Ruth's looking for me--"  
  
"I'll tell her about the helping and not about the hiding," Xander said, still grinning. It was kind of weird that he already felt like an old hand at this, but weird in a good way. He'd figured out that Larry and his family were kind of a package deal; the weird part was figuring out that he didn't actually  _mind_ that much.  
  


***


	5. New Year's Eve

"I thought your parents were having a thing tonight," Xander said, when he walked out of the Roadway Cafe at ten-twenty-seven when the night busboy finally bothered to show up and he could get off work.

Larry was sitting on the hood of his car, his jacket zipped up against the chilly December air. "They are," he said. "But it's not a family thing. I didn't have to be there." He grinned. "So I thought maybe I could be here, instead. Although I almost gave up on the element of surprise and went in to find out whether or not you even went to work tonight at all."

Xander rolled his eyes. "Chad decided to have a bad attitude about having to work on New Year's Eve," he said. "I almost had to do a double shift." At least he'd have been back in the kitchen most of the time, instead of out there with the customers. He didn't like dealing with Saturday night drunks--although he would step in if one of them got too grabby with a waitress--and somehow, he was guessing the New Year's drunks would be worse.

"You know, I don't think I've heard you say 'Chad' without adding 'the Asshole' before now." It was probably true. Chad was the owner's nephew, and got away with murder--though mostly, from what Xander could see, because he worked when his aunt wasn't at the restaurant, and nobody told on him. It was possible that she'd be just as pissed as everyone else; they just didn't want to risk it.

He shrugged. "Figured it went without saying, tonight."

"It does. Anyway," Larry said. "Want to get out of here?"

God, yes, Xander wanted to get out of here. "I'm not really fit to go anywhere," he said, though. He didn't have to wear a uniform except for the apron he was already taking off, but still, he was aware that nine-plus hours of busing tables and washing dishes didn't exactly leave you April fresh.

Larry shrugged. "We could go somewhere and talk."

"Go somewhere and talk," in Xander's eight-month experience of dating Larry, usually meant, "go somewhere and make out." They talked plenty, but they could talk anywhere, and lately it had turned into a joke between them. And after a long, crappy day of washing dishes, "talking" sounded good to him. Not that it ever sounded bad. He had his hand on the door of the car before something about Larry's tone sank in. "Wait," he said. "You mean actually talk."

"Yeah. I mean, we can--but yeah." He shrugged again, turning away from Xander to go around the other side of the car.

Xander tried not to assume the absolute worst. Larry wasn't dumping him. He wouldn't have come to pick Xander up from work to do that. Besides, things were going really well, as far as Xander knew. Then his brain caught up with the situation, and he looked over at Larry, who was fiddling with his car keys. "The stuff you wouldn't tell me about last week?"

He nodded. "Still not bad. At least, I don't think so, and my parents have calmed down, and--look, can we just go?"

"Sure." And that was the last thing either of them said for a while, until they were parked out in the woods.

Larry could talk around something as well as Xander could; better, maybe, because he didn't babble when he did it, and so nobody even suspected that he was frantically trying to keep from getting to the point. Xander remembered figuring out, back in June or so, that sometimes it only looked like Larry was having a perfectly sane and normal conversation, and that the only thing you could do was dig around to see what topic provoked a sudden, but not quite random, subject change. Tonight, though, Larry just turned off the car, undid his seat belt, and then said, "I'm not going back to school."

Xander frowned at him. "I know I make it look thrilling," he said, after a second, "but the wonderful world of minimum wage isn't really all that wonderful."

"As hot as you made the uniform from Pizza Express look," Larry said, grinning, "I'm not dropping out. I'm just not going back to UCLA."

"Where are you going?" At least Los Angeles was close enough to visit for the weekend. What if Larry was going to school in Oregon? Or Ohio? Xander wouldn't see him again until next summer. Unless he moved to Ohio. He couldn't afford to move to Ohio. Besides, he didn't want to leave Sunnydale. He didn't really like Sunnydale, but the number of people who knew what was really going on in town didn't need to get any lower. He couldn't just abandon Buffy and Willow like that, either, and he was planning to ignore the little voice that pointed out they didn't have any trouble abandoning him. 

So if Larry went to school in Ohio or Florida or wherever, Xander would see him twice a year, at the most, and then Larry would graduate, and he'd probably go to law school there, and then he'd get a job there, and by then it would be, like, eight years from now, and he and Xander would definitely break up. "Because this totally sucks. I know school is more important, but I'm going to hate not seeing you, and when you come home for the summer your parents are going to want to--"

"Hey!" Larry snapped his fingers in front of Xander's face. "Get off the crazy train, Alexander."

"Don't call me Alexander," Xander said automatically.

"You told me I could call you anything I wanted," Larry pointed out, and Xander's face grew hot as he remembered why he'd told Larry that. The smirk Larry gave him told him Larry remembered the context, too.

On the other hand, mild embarrassment--and the accompanying sudden burst of horniness, not that it looked like that was leading anywhere tonight--had broken his train of thought; he looked over at Larry and took a deep breath. "I don't think it's that crazy," he said.

"It's crazy because nobody said anything about not seeing you, dumbass. I'm going to school here."

"Here?" Xander repeated. "Like, Sunnydale?"

"Crestwood College," Larry said. "They offered me a scholarship last year, and I called them over Thanksgiving and found out that it's still good. I'm starting in a couple of weeks." He sighed. "That's what my parents were so pissed about. I didn't tell them until I showed up at home with all my stuff."

"Yeah, but--law school," Xander said. "I thought you were going to UCLA because it would look better on applications?" See, he thought, he had been listening. Even if half of what Larry had said about school and his plans made no sense at all. It was Larry's future career; he could be stupid if he wanted to. 

"That's the other thing they were pissed about. I'm not going to law school. I changed my major." Larry shrugged. "I can play football at Crestwood, so I'll have some more experience, and I figure with the number of teachers we went through in just one year, Sunnydale High isn’t going to care who their coach is sleeping with. Plus, they know me."

Xander grinned at him. "You're going to be a gym teacher," he said. "You're going to go to work wearing dorky polyester shorts and a whistle around your neck."

"Actually, no," Larry said. "I'm going to be a history teacher who can coach. But I can get the whistle if you want. Maybe even the shorts."

He laughed. "Not if you ever want to have sex with me again."

"Anyway," Larry said, quickly; Xander approved of the rapid subject change. "My parents thought that this was about you--that I was transferring to Crestwood because I didn't like not being able to see you. But... okay, I admit that's a bonus, but it's not the reason. I transferred because if I want to coach, I need to go someplace smaller where I can play ball again. And if I was transferring anyway..." He paused, drumming his hands on the steering wheel for a few seconds. 

"It bothered me before," he said finally. "But at Thanksgiving, I realized that it's just not right for me to be somewhere safer while you guys are out there risking your necks every day because of the Hellmouth. I mean, maybe somebody else could do that, but I can't. Not that I can tell my parents that, which is probably why they still think I picked Crestwood instead of another school because of you."

It wasn't that Larry's logic didn't make sense. It was that Xander wasn't going to let this go without comment. "I don't know, Lar," he said. "I think I'm a pretty good reason to transfer. I even think I remember you calling me 'God' at least once last week."

Larry reached out to thwap him on the back of the head, although then he didn't pull his hand away, letting it slide down to his neck. "My mom had better never find out about that," he said, "so I think I'll still claim you're just a bonus. But speaking of bonuses, they're making me either live at home or in the dorms next semester--"

Please, dorms, Xander breathed silently. Dorms, dorms, dorms...

"--so of course I picked the dorm."

Thank you, Xander thought to anyone who had been listening.

"But this summer, if I can save enough money for a deposit, I can get an apartment." Larry grinned at him. "So you'd better be saving, too."

...Okay. He was maybe going to freak out later about the thought that it sounded like Larry was suggesting they move in together. Maybe. Right now, he just said, "I'm already on it," because getting out of his parents' house and living in the same place as Larry? There wasn't a lot of bad there that he could see.

Well, maybe one thing. "Just don't join a fraternity." Larry looked puzzled, so Xander went on, "There was this thing junior year with an evil fraternity at Crestwood. They were going to feed Buffy to a giant snake, and there might possibly have been some involuntary makeup-wearing, and just don't, okay?" Because okay, that particular evil fraternity was long gone, but Xander didn't exactly find it hard to believe that there might be another one out there. Lurking. With Greek letters on their shirts.

"Football. Classes. Evil-fighting. A part-time job, if I can find the time. You." Larry ticked them off on his fingers as he said them. "See anywhere in there where I'd have time for a fraternity, even if I wanted to join one?"

"I had to check."

"They made you wear makeup?" To give him credit, it sounded like Larry was trying really hard not to laugh. He just wasn't all that successful.

"It was not pretty."

"No," Larry said. "It wouldn't be." Then, quickly, he added, "I kind of like your face the way it is."

"Good, because I'm not wearing makeup again."

"Just pink plastic barrettes in your hair?"

"Let it go, Larry," Xander said, laughing, and then Larry was reaching over and undoing Xander's seat belt, pulling him closer for a kiss.

"You know," Larry said, as his fingers slid under the hem of Xander's shirt, "there's a chance that at midnight, civilization as we know it is going to end."

Xander had seen news stories about the Y2K thing; it was just that numbers on a computer seemed a lot less scary than, well, things with fangs and claws and scales. "Think so?"

"There's a chance," Larry repeated. "So I think we should take advantage of the time we have before we have to start killing people for food, or whatever they keep saying is going to happen."

"Backseat?" Xander suggested hopefully.

"You read my mind."

No, Xander thought, it was just that they knew each other pretty well by now. Well enough that a sane guy probably would have run for the hills once he figured out what Xander was really like.

Good thing Larry seemed to be crazy, Xander thought as he got out of the car. If he ran, Xander would have just had to run after him, because he wasn't giving up that easily.

That should have been a terrifying thought, but somehow? It wasn't.

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


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